


The Good Guys

by TurtleTotem



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Assassins & Hitmen, M/M, Paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:07:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is an assassin for the CIA; Erik works, shall we say, freelance. The only thing they have in common is their target, Sebastian Shaw.</p><p>Written for a someone else's Hitmen AU gifset, view here on my Tumblr: http://turtletotem.tumblr.com/post/15939797803/charles-xavier-believes-in-his-country-believes</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Guys

Charles Xavier believes in his country, believes in the CIA, believes in the good he’s doing in the world — or, more accurately, the evil he’s removing from the world. Sometimes he has trouble sleeping, blood spatter flashing behind his eyelids, but he tries to think about the men who  _won’t_ die because of what he’s done, the grocers and bankers and airline pilots, housewives and hairdressers and schoolchildren, who will never have to know how close they came. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

 

Lately, he’s been curling up closer to Erik, instead, when he’s sleepless in the middle of the night. It works much better, and he tries not to think about that too hard, because it doesn’t make sense. Because Erik’s hands are even bloodier than his own.

 

***

 

Erik believes in the refreshing icy harshness of reality, the reality that there are no good people, no innocents, not at their deepest core. There’s no one who doesn’t deserve to die, no perfect person who’s better than death. Everyone dies. Sometimes Erik helps, for pleasure or profit. Since his parents died, Erik hasn’t met a single human being he wasn’t willing to kill, under the right circumstances.

 

Well. Maybe one.

 

***

 

They nearly kill each other the first time they meet, the first time they try to kill Shaw — Erik because Charles is in his way, Charles because Erik is pointing a gun at him. They manage to botch it all so badly that Shaw gets away without even  _realizing_ how close he came, leaving his two would-be assassins to nearly kill each other  _again_ out of pure rage before they realize, before they put it together. That they have the same target. That they want the same thing.

 

***

 

It starts as a cover, of course. They need a way to track Shaw, get close to him, without attracting attention. This being New York City the week after the legalization of gay marriage, the easiest cover for two men traveling together is obvious, and they blend right in. It’s cheaper to share a hotel room, anyway, and after all… neither of them really trusts the other out of their sight. Not yet.

 

The night it becomes real, Charles is a little drunk (not nearly as much as he’s acting, of course) and having entirely too much fun being cheerfully handsy. They’re tailing Shaw’s right hand, Frost, through the red light district, being just loud and obnoxious enough to avoid attention, but the woman has always had the most chilling sixth sense about when she was being watched. They get a half-step too close, and see her back stiffen before she checks the reflection on the nearest window.

 

So, naturally, they fall against the nearest doorway, kissing passionately.

 

And they don’t catch Frost, not that night, because they don’t come out of the doorway for nearly half an hour, and then only to head straight back to the hotel.

 

***

 

Two weeks can be a lifetime for men like them. A lifetime with someone competent and intelligent and beautiful, someone they don’t have to keep any secrets from. Charles touches someone for what feels like the first time in centuries, glorying in every brush of lips or fingers, watching Erik’s eyes at the strangest times as if he can see into his soul, and likes what he’s finding there. It’s unsettling and it ought to be frightening. Instead, Erik feels  _real_ for the first time in his adult life, as if he might exist outside of his revenge, and he tells Charles things he’s never told anyone, about his mother, about Shaw, about himself. For two weeks, they skate across the surface of reality, choosing not to think past Shaw’s death — the end of Charles’s assignment, the fulfillment of Erik’s life’s goal.

 

They make a plan. They know where Shaw will be. Together they can take him. Together.

 

***

 

Charles’s orders change the night before the op. Wordless, bloodless, he shows Erik the message.

 

_CHANGE IN PLAN. DO NOT PUNCH TICKET. DELIVER TICKET TO RENDEZVOUS AT EARLIEST CONVENIENCE._

 

“What,” Erik forces out his throat, “what does this mean?”

 

“It means Shaw’s cut a deal,” Charles says bluntly. “He’s turning in his allies in exchange for the CIA’s protection.”

 

Erik seems to be having trouble breathing. “Protection. You’re going to  _protect_ him.”

 

“I have to. Erik, I  _have_ to. Those are my orders.”  _Please tell me you understand. Please don’t make yourself my enemy._ He doesn’t say it out loud, knows his eyes are saying it for him.

 

Erik stares at him a long quivering moment, on the edge of explosion — and then the fight drains out of him. “I understand,” he chokes. “You’re just following orders.”

 

It’s too easy, and Charles knows it. Ought to have known it. But he lets himself be lulled, distracted, by touches and kisses that taste of desperation and, he realizes later, a plea for forgiveness.

 

When he wakes only an hour later, Erik is gone, and Charles hits the door at a run, cursing them both for fools.

 

***

 

They don’t stop moving for twenty-four straight hours, chasing each other through alleys and train stations, gardens and rooftops.

 

_Erik, don’t do this. Don’t make yourself my enemy._

 

Erik gets the drop on him in a bar, the kind of place where people go still and wary, not screaming and hysterical, when he pulls out a gun.  _This is your last warning, Charles. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me._

 

Charles catches up with him in the middle of a park, where old men are too busy playing chess to notice the gun in Charles’s hand, the gun Erik presses to his own forehead.  _Shoot me, then. Right here, right now. It’s the only way you’ll stop me._

 

He can’t do it then, or eight hours later, when Erik is running down the sidewalk, Shaw spooked at last and only moments ahead, Shaw who he’s supposed to protect and deliver to his superiors. He has a clear shot and his finger’s on the trigger and he can’t do it.

 

He wrecks the car instead, right there on the sidewalk, nearly killing them both. Leaves Erik trapped in the wreckage, glass in his forehead.  _I can’t let you do this, Erik. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._ Leaves him and goes to collect Shaw.

 

***

 

Erik catches up to them a block and a half shy of the rendezvous. Charles drags Shaw into an empty warehouse, and they’re chasing each other through the skeletons of factory equipment, popping off shots that they both pray don’t hit, footfalls and gunfire echoing. It doesn’t take long for the warehouse to attract a fairy-ring of blue and red police lights, an authoritative voice on a megaphone demanding all parties surrender. They ignore it.

 

Shaw seems… amused, gun at the ready, but with an air of offhand precaution, as if little Erik Lehnsherr could never truly hurt him. Charles, who had considered this assignment one of the least guilt-inducing of his career, can’t help hating his country, just a little, for letting this evil man buy his life with the lives of his friends.

 

They turn a corner see Erik, facing the wrong way, confused by the echoes of the warehouse, and the shot is utterly, entirely clear, and Shaw is raising his gun.

 

And Charles, Charles grabs his arm, holds him still for one crucial half-second, the half-second Erik needs to turn around and shoot Shaw right between the eyes.

 

They stare at each other, Shaw’s blood spattered hot on Charles’s arm. And there’s no time to talk about it. Because the police aren’t waiting any longer.

 

“We can surrender,” Charles says.

 

“You can,” Erik says. “The agency will cover for you. Not for me.”

 

“I’ll protect you. I’ll do whatever—”

 

“It won’t be enough. I won’t surrender.”

 

“What’s your plan, then? Shoot your way out?”

 

Erik reloads.

 

“I can’t let you do that.”

 

“You couldn’t let me kill Shaw, either.”

 

“These are  _policemen_ , Erik, these are the good guys—”

 

Erik laughs, joylessly, and after all, Charles knows what he thinks of categories like ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy.’ “They’ll kill us. That’s all that matters.”

 

“These are good, honest, innocent men. I can’t let you hurt them. Erik,  _please_.”

 

Erik sidles up to the window, already calculating odds and trajectories. Men are gathering around the door, awaiting orders to storm the warehouse. Erik chambers a round, aims it at the door.

 

The police burst in —  _NYPD! Put your hands in the air!_  — and Charles tackles Erik almost before he can get off a shot, almost.

 

The police see muzzle flare and open fire.

 

Charles feels a sudden breathtaking blaze of pain in the small of his back. Things get unclear after that, swinging dizzily between fire and numbness, between fear/anger/pain and a hazy, confused peace, Erik is holding him, things must be all right, Erik is all right… He’s intermittently aware of gunfire and shouting, of terror and torment in Erik’s eyes.

 

“Charles, can you stand, we have a window — We can get out if — “

 

He tries, he tries to stand, and realizes, hears his own voice repeating, like a chant, trying to make it make sense. “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.”

 

Erik is crying now, is he hurt?  _No, no, don’t hurt him…_

 

“I did this,” Erik is whispering. “I’m so sorry, Charles.”

 

He feels Erik’s lips against his own, hard and desperate, and then he’s gone, where did he go, why can’t he see him, why can’t he see…

 

***

 

The agency takes care of its own. Charles has solid medical care, physical therapy. His career is over, of course. They might transfer him to some desk jockey position, they say he has a right to that if he wants it. They say that because they don’t know he betrayed them, chose Erik’s life over Shaw’s. Charles doesn’t know if he wants or deserves the desk job. All he wants, as the days turn into weeks and the hospital room grows smaller and smaller around him, as he develops his very first bedsore, as he wrestles the wheelchair into submission and teaches it to obey him, comes to love and hate and need it — all he wants is to be left alone. There is not a single human being on Earth that he wants to see.

 

Well. Maybe one.

 

He’s facing the window, six weeks after the shoot-out, wearing only his pajama pants, trying to convince himself to choke down another bite of toast — they’re alarmed at how much weight he’s lost — when he feels a shadow fall across his shoulder. He stills, not daring to look up.

 

After a long moment, when Charles doesn’t look up, Erik takes a few more steps, sinks to his knees before the wheelchair. His eyes are huge and horrified, and Charles turns away. He’s already had his fill of pity.

 

“Charles.” Erik’s voice is barely a breath. He hesitantly takes hold of Charles’s hand, and Charles lets him. “Forgive me.”

 

Charles takes a deep, slow breath. Erik’s fingers are so warm. He clenches his own cold hand around them, hard enough to hurt, as he turns back to Erik. “Earn it.”

 

They lock gazes for a long minute, Erik’s eyes hopeful, searching. “Name your price.”

 

Charles swallows. “I’m going to need someone to help me, now. Someone I can trust. While I learn to do things on my own.”

 

“Done,” Erik says. “And?”

 

“No more freelancing. Not ever. I can’t sit around wondering who you’re killing behind my back.”

 

“No point to it now, anyway,” Erik says evenly, “with Shaw dead. Again, done.” He ventures a smile. “What are we going to do, though? Two ex-assassins in search of new careers?”

 

Charles feels a smile quirk his lips. “As a child, I wanted to be a teacher.”

 

Erik grins, and Charles realizes he’s kneading his hand, rubbing tingling circles into the skin. He knows what that would have meant, six weeks ago. He has to know if it still does, if this is pity or if Erik actually still wants him. “One more thing,” he says, “before I will call you forgiven.”

 

“Name it.”

 

“Kiss me. Right now.”

 

Erik is on him almost before the words are spoken, straddling him in the chair, kissing hard and frantic with one hand tangling in his hair while the other scrapes nails almost-lightly down Charles’s chest, stopping over his heartbeat and flattening there, pressing palm to pulse as if to reassure himself. Charles winds his arms around Erik’s neck, fingernails digging into Erik’s shoulders, guarding against an escape attempt that never comes.

 

The next time the nurse comes to check on Charles, the room is empty, and the CIA never hears from him again.

 

And if they keep remarkably close tabs, thereafter, on a middle-school teacher in a wheelchair, and his husband the martial arts instructor, there’s never any reason for it to matter.


End file.
